Richmond Town Council Meeting Update for March 21, 2023

By Cynthia Drummond for BRVCA
Wednesday March 22nd 2023

RICHMOND – The acrimony between members of the Town Council reached an all - time high at the March 21 meeting. Before the meeting even began, councilors squabbled over the new seating arrangement, introduced at the previous meeting by council President Mark Trimmer because some council members did not feel comfortable sitting next to councilor Michael Colasante.

Recounting the incident on the condition of anonymity, several sources said Colasante became angry when he entered the council chambers and saw that he would not be in his original seat, but had instead been moved to the end of the table.

Refusing to take his seat, Colasante instead stood closely behind the seat of council Vice President Richard Nassaney, who found his behavior threatening. He eventually took his seat, but expressed his frustration, another source recounted, by flinging a paper copy of the agenda at the other council members, whom he referred to as ”f*****g” babies.”

In an interview on Wednesday morning, Nassaney described the scene before the meeting began.

“I sat where the V.P. would usually sit, and Mr. Colasante was not very happy with that seating arrangement and chose to stand over me for an extended period of time in a semi-authoritative manner, demanding that I move, and I informed him that the President, multiple members of the public and other council members had asked me to sit in that seat, so I obliged,” he said. “Colasante was asked a week or two before to move his seat, which he declined to do, so we made the move and last evening, after a very contentious standoff, he finally moved himself to the far side of the table.”

“Tri-town” is now just one town

A majority of three council members voted in favor of a motion made by councilor Samantha Wilcox to decline a proposal to endorse a “tri town collaboration” with Hopkinton and Charlestown.

The collaboration, spearheaded by Colasante, began with a discussion at the annual Chariho Omnibus meeting in January about how the three Chariho towns might work together to oppose unfunded state mandates and support funding for the regional school district.

The group has met twice, the first time at a Richmond restaurant and the second time at Colasante’s residence.

There were concerns, expressed by some members of the Chariho School Committee and members of the three Town Councils, that the group was not posting meeting agendas or holding public meetings with published minutes.

Wilcox noted that information about the meetings was not publicly accessible.

“… I had to really fish for information, I had to do an APRA [Access to Public Records Act] request to get information on this, and once I saw that information, it was, for me, the fact sheet was just something I couldn’t agree with,” she said.

Colasante vigorously defended the collaboration, insisting that council members’ concerns were unfounded.

“I don’t know how you can make this up in your head,” he told the council.

Trimmer countered,

“There is a reason why we have these ridiculously laborious rules to follow and so on, and it’s so that everybody stays involved, knows what’s going on makes informed decisions, and so on,” he said. “This situation wasn’t done that way, and so I don’t care if the commission [collaboration] meets a hundred more times. I personally, as Town Council President and I personally, as one of the five Town Council members, can’t say ‘hey, I’m going to … give the endorsement of the Town Council to this group.’ “

Councilor Helen Sheehan, who attended both meetings, praised Colasante for taking action when others had not.

“Everybody has talked about we have all the unfunded mandates and everybody says we should do something about it, and nobody’s done anything about it – I should say, nobody but Mike has done anything about it,” she said.

Trimmer suggested the items of concern to the town be added to a future Town Council agenda so the entire council could address them.

The motion to decline to join the collaboration passed with Trimmer, Wilcox and Nassaney voting in favor. Sheehan voted against the motion. Colasante was reluctant to cast his vote, but when pressed by Town Clerk Erin Liese to record a vote one way or the other, he voted nay.

With the Charlestown Town Council voting to take no action on the collaboration, only Hopkinton has endorsed the group, leaving its future in doubt.

Technical glitches prevented the town from video- recording the meeting, but some residents who were in the council chambers when the vote was taken clapped in approval and were then mocked by Colasante who mimicked their applause.

Councilors and Town Hall staff

The disagreements continued when the council discussed an agenda item, added by Trimmer, regarding interactions between council members and Town Hall staff.

“We as a council need to agree on, we can’t just go and assign  a job to somebody or tell somebody they need to do a job differently,” he said. “One individual can’t say ‘this should be your responsibility or what have you’. It is up to the council as a whole, put it on the agenda, discuss it, to pass it…It’s not up to us. It’s a threatening work environment at times.”

Some members of town staff, who spoke off the record to protect their identities, said Colasante had made comments that they had found threatening. One comment, confirmed to have been made by Colasante to several staffers, was,

“Don’t worry about a thing. I give people enough rope to hang themselves.”

There was, not surprisingly, continued disagreement over whether council members could or should direct town employees.

“Now, it’s my responsibility, however, to go in and talk with you from time to time, to ask you certain things,” Colasante said. “Certain people on the council are getting the feeling that certain people are being dictatorial and demanding that things have to be done, and, I mean, you just have to go back to the Town [Home Rule] Charter, because everybody’s trying to dodge that we’re the hire and firing agents and nobody has the authority to send out a letter of denial, but they’ll scoot around that and say ‘no the town, the way it’s been working for years, we haven’t done that’. Well, if you want to follow the town charter, then follow it 100%, everybody, okay?”

Council members debated what they could and could not ask town employees to do.

“I think that being a councilor and going into the Town Hall and you have to have the utmost respect for the people working there and not make them feel uneasy in any way, shape or form,” Nassaney said. “You are a servant. You’re a public servant. They are the employees of the town.”

Former council President Nell Carpenter said whether interactions with town staff were appropriate depended to a large extent on the council members’ intentions.

“It’s what your intentions are,” she said. “It’s what you’re trying to accomplish. Is it for the greater good?”

Mark Reynolds, who served on the town’s Charter Review Commission, said the role of the council did not include managing the daily operations of the town.

“Your role is the big picture, policy-making,” he said. “’What can we do to bring business into town? What can we do to lessen regulations on businesses?’ Big picture. Policy. You’re like the Board of Directors of a publicly-held company. Those are the kinds of decisions you should be talking about, not who we should hire as a clerk in the Planning Department.”

In other business, the council hired Jeffrey Vaillancourt as the part-time electrical inspector with Trimmer, Sheehan and Colasante voting in favor, Nassaney abstaining and Wilcox voting no.

The council also approved the hiring of a part-time Wellness Director, a position that was approved by the previous council.

Council members received an update from representatives from the Rhode Island Department of Transportation on the upcoming roundabout project at the intersection of Routes 138 and 112. Work is expected to begin this summer, but will stop during the Washington County Fair which takes place from Aug. 16 to Aug. 20.

It was evident Tuesday that the divisions on the council were, if anything, deepening. Asked whether he believed council members would be able to work together, Trimmer said he hoped the bickering would end so the council could attend to business.

“Now that we’ve put all that rancor behind us, we can get down to the work the people elected us to do,” he said.